This is an update from Pastor Yoshiya Kondo in Iwate prefecture, Japan, who has been serving and ministering in the disaster area since the tsunami.
March 26, Sat. We went over the hill in the snow to go to Miyako city. 8 of us men headed toward a house of “someone who needed help” that a local pastor told us about with a help of car navigation. We parked near the destination, and heard a “Hey!” calling out to us. We stood in front of the house, or is this a house? No it was an inn. We walked in and saw it in a terrible condition. Bent concrete walls, piled up mud, woods that shot into the room with the tsunami as they crashed the windows, rubbles. A couple hundred plates and food scattered, destroyed heavy machines in the kitchen… After four hours, we finished most of the cleaning out.
Then we talked to the inn keeper in his seventies. Looking at the ocean, he said “I don’t want to remember (about the tsunami)” with tears in his eyes. But slowly, he kindly shared with us about his experience of an unforgettable terror. “When the ‘wall-like water’ came, I was swept away before I knew it but was saved because I got stuck on something. My wife was swept into the cellar with the water but was rescued by the local fire fighters. We survived miraculously, but looking at the destruction it did, we thought we could never reopen the inn. But then, these helpers came out of nowhere.” He looked around the cleaned out room and said, “I guess there is also a saving god…” He told us with a wrinkled face to come back in 6 months and that he will treat us good fish. I couldn’t help myself but to ask if I could pray for him. In 6 months? I would rather see him again tomorrow and pray for him. Even if I couldn’t see him, I want to serve him through praying for him. (by Pastor Yoshiya Kondo in Morioka city, Iwate)
